Mitchell Report Thread (Nothing to see here! Drugs are bad. Crisis averted!)

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Verducci weighs in, Page 25)

So anyway....

This is intriguing to me: Listened to Mark Fainaru-Wada for the last two days say that the report was essentially driven by federal investigations, in which witnesses are pressured into cooperating under threat of prosecution/perjury/contempt/whatever. In other words, you can't judge guilt or innocence by this report, since the credibility of the witnesses is questionable at best.

Wouldn't that also to apply to the evidence collected for Game of Shadows? Wasn't much of that based on a federal investigation, and information collected from federal prosecutors?

I don't know the answer, I'm raising the question....if MFW is saying you can't completely rely on the allegations made by the Mitchell report, how did he rely on the allegations made during the GOS investigation?

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Verducci weighs in, Page 25)

Well, I think this is pretty much what I've been saying for a few years. Until any of this so-called evidence is tested in a due process setting, we really only know one side of it.

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Verducci weighs in, Page 25)

I'm surprised this thread isn't 400 pages long yet.

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Verducci weighs in, Page 25)

I had a discussion this morning with my mom who is a lawyer. She kept talking about 'reasonable doubt' and 'witnesses' and 'circumstantial evidence.'

I kept having to remind her The Mitchell Report isn't a court case.

And I really hope we don't get wrapped up in the minutiae of when/how somebody punctured Roger Clemens' ass.

If you were named in the report, and you didn't do roids, publicly defend yourself...

Otherwise, let's take it for what it is and move on.

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Verducci weighs in, Page 25)

Actually, they are different.

Game of Shadows, while gaining their information from federal investigations, used the exact words of the steroid users as well as the documented evidence of BALCO shipping receipts. Mitchell’s report did no such thing.

Mitchell was able to learn that Clemens did steroids because Clemens trainer was asked. The trainer holds no actual evidence, only his word. That is why Fainaru-Wada was saying that the evidence came about through pressure.

I am not going to say that the trainer is lying, but that is how someone like Clemens or Petitte can get out of this.

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Verducci weighs in, Page 25)


Is there anyone, anyone, who can honestly tell me that this isn't as big a problem in the NFL? Is there anyone who can explain how you go from five NFL players over 300 pounds to more than 300 players over 300 pounds? How players are named but no owners are brought front and center? How there seems to be a lot less pressure on NFL and college football teams?

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Wait a minute: Send in the skeptics!)

The public "vindication" of anything that pops into the drug-riddled head of Jose Canseco is probably the worst thing to come out of this whole thing, journalism-wise.

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Wait a minute: Send in the skeptics!)

Here's what I don't get about the reaction to the Mitchell Report ... the Report got the witnesses they could get. Nowhere (I think?) does anyone claim it's definitive.

So just because suspected names are missing doesn't mean those suspected didn't do it. Sammy Sosa's name didn't come up, but Sosa wouldn't have been logically linked to any of the three sources Mitchell used to name names.

To me, the Report merely scratches the surface.

And to parrot Buckweaver, Donald Fehr can go fuck himself. What was that inference about the owner's doing something sooner about steroids? Gee Don, what about MLBPA's role in stonewalling even the most rudimentary steroid procedures MLB tried to implement? What a fucking asshole he is.

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Wait a minute: Send in the skeptics!)

Here's my first draft of a Unified Field Theory of US Sporting Ethics. Feel free to add, edit or argue:

"As long as the outcome of the game is not predetermined or materially influenced by outside agency (bribery, coercion, point-shaving, bought fighters, etc.), Greater America doesn't much care. Greater America is a relentlessly amoral society in which only results - and the quality of the entertainment in question - matter."

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Wait a minute: Send in the skeptics!)

I would argue that GA's apathy toward the steroids story is not amoral but admirably well-reasoned.

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Wait a minute: Send in the skeptics!)

I think you're probably right - at least individual to individual. But the story I'm not seeing, and haven't seen since this all began, is the one in which GA's thoughts and feelings on the matter are actually made plain. Have they reached their current steady-state of unflappability through sharp moral reason, or flat moral apathy?

 

Re: Mitchell Report Thread (Wait a minute: Send in the skeptics!)

C'mon, people, weigh in! We need thirteen more posts to get past page 26. After which I won't have to look at CarrotTop's pecs every time I click this thread. Hurry!